THUS came Saul into Damascus;—not as he had expected, to triumph in an enterprise on which his soul was set, to brave all difficulties and dangers, to enter into houses and carry off prisoners to Jerusalem; —but he passed himself like a prisoner beneath the gateway: and through the colonnades of the street called "Straight," where he saw not the crowd of those who gazed on him, he was led by the hands of others, trembling and helpless, to the house of Judas, his dark and solitary lodging.
Three days the blindness continued. . . . The conflict of Saul's feelings was so great, and his remorse so piercing and so deep, that during this time he neither ate nor drank. He could have no communion with the Christians, for they had been terrified by the news of his approach. And the unconverted Jews could have no true sympathy with his present state of mind. He fasted and prayed in silence. The recollections of his early years,—the passages of the ancient Scriptures which he had never understood,—the thoughts of his own cruelty and violence,—the memory of the last looks of Stephen,—all these crowded into his mind, and made the three days equal to long years of repentance. And if we may imagine one feeling above all others to have kept possession of his heart, it would be the feeling suggested by Christ's expostulation: "Why persecutest thou me?" . . . He waited on God: and in his blindness a vision was granted to him. He seemed to behold one who came in to him,—and he knew by revelation that his name was Ananias,—and it appeared to him that the stranger laid his hand on him, that he might receive his sight. . . . Ananias came into the house where Saul, faint, and exhausted with three days' abstinence, still remained in darkness. When he laid his hands on his head . . . "There fell from his eyes as it had been scales": and . . . "the same hour he looked up on the face of Ananias." It was a face he had never seen before. But the expression of Christian love assured him of reconciliation with God.
—From 'The Life and Epistles of St. Paul," and
